


Big Light

by livelifeliving



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/F, POV Carmilla, Post-Silas Battle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:34:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelifeliving/pseuds/livelifeliving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been a while since Carmilla’s days at Silas and her days with Laura. By now she’s freaked out enough golden haired women, owl-sweater wearers, and yellow pillow owners to know better than to keep hoping- but that doesn’t stop her. She should know better. After all, she’s been wrong every time before. But what happens the time that she’s not? Maybe if she finds her, they can be happy and together and in love-finally. But just because time has stopped mattering for Carmilla doesn’t mean it’s stopped the rest of the world from moving on.  </p><p>Title comes from Houses’ song by the same name aka the song I had on repeat for every word of this thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nothing to Save

Carmilla turns, a breath she doesn’t really need getting stuck in her throat as she spots golden hair from across the room. Her golden hair- it must be. Closing her eyes for a moment, she takes a breath, doing her best to gather her thoughts, just as she has so many times before. After so many laughs, endearingly dorky outfits, and yellow pillows she knows she needs to stop looking. She knows she needs to stop hoping. 

\----

Once the fighting was over, things were quieter than they had ever been before. Even in the coffin so far underground things had not been this eerily silent. Then again, the coffin was before she’d heard that beautiful voice, that adorable laugh, that miraculous sigh of content against her lips. How ironic that it was only in death that she had found something she wanted so badly to live for. 

Pulling herself out of the cavern, Carmilla couldn’t help but smile. For the first time in all of her existence, she was totally and completely free. No restrictions of upper class society, no vampiric mother, no crazy fish gods, and no disasters to be held accountable for. As her eyes scanned the campus though, the smile quickly faded. Rubble surrounded her, every building nothing more than burning wood and crushed stone. Her heart immediately dropped. 

“Laura?” she called out, panic creeping into her voice. She quickly scanned as far as she could see, though there was no sign of life. She had said she’d be at the apartment, but there was no apartment left for her to be at. There was nothing. So where was she?

For days Carmilla looked, first checking the remains of every building on campus. There she found nothing but death- and even then she checked, just needing to know what had happened to her precious Laura. The surrounding towns were next; though they had mostly emptied out due to the chaos she had been partially responsible for. She asked anyone she came across, but no one had seen her. No one knew where she was or where she had been or what she meant to Carmilla. Still she kept looking. 

Soon enough she’d searched nearly all of Austria. She thought about reaching out to Laura’s Silas friends, but there really weren’t many left, and even fewer who would consider helping at all. Carmilla had tried reaching out to Danny, but that lead only to threats of staking and Carmilla knew that she was serious. She was bitter and hurt and carrying guilt and sadness with her and Carmilla knew all too well what that was like, so she backed off pretty quickly. The only one left who didn’t absolutely hate her guts was LaFontaine. Losing Perry had changed them though, and they weren’t up for a grand search- not after how their own search had gone. After many attempts at convincing, LaF could only give one piece of advice to Carmilla, and that was that it might be better to never know than to know with certainty that Laura was gone. Carmilla stopped asking after that.

\----

With her eyes still closed, Carmilla recalls Laura’s face. For a moment she allows herself to smile, proud that she can still remember every detail of her. She is doing her best to keep her light from the dark clutches of eternity. A voice in the back of her mind reminds her that, in the incredibly unlikely event that Laura is still out there, she will look nothing like the girl she works so hard to remember. It’s been thirty years after all, and everyone else is granted the gift of wearing the years they have lived for the world to see. 

She opens her eyes and the stranger that had caught her attention is nowhere to be found. It wouldn’t surprise Carmilla if she had never been there at all- it wouldn’t be the first time her wishful thinking had intruded upon her daily life. With a final glance at the painting before her, she sighs, turning to begin weaving her way out of the Musée de l’Orangerie. Just as she comes to the doorway, Carmilla stops for a moment, the strange feeling of being watched settling over her. For a split second she considers looking back, curiosity leaving her with the desire to know whom it might be. She knows better though, and with the number of lives she’s lead in Paris, it would be nothing but trouble to run into someone who once knew her. 

She makes one last stop at the museum’s bookshop, quickly scanning to see if anything new has come in this week. With nothing catching her eye, she turns to go. Over the noise of people talking and walking and moseying about, Carmilla hears the barista from behind the counter of the museum’s small café. “Laura?”  
Before she can tell herself not to, Carmilla is walking towards the café, dodging tourists and school children as she picks up speed. In a frantic bit of French, Carmilla asks the barista if she had seen where the woman named Laura had gone after retrieving her drink. In a puzzled and slightly wary tone, Carmilla gets a point towards the exit and a simple, “That way.”

With a hurried “Merci,” Carmilla is doing her best to remain casual while pushing through the crowd of people attempting to exit the museum, all the while scanning for any signs of familiarity in those ahead of her. 

As she makes her way through the door, she indulges herself one last time. “Laura?” she calls out, doing her best to sound like any other person looking for their friend in the crowd. She tries not to wince at the bit of desperate pleading that slips through. 

After a second, Carmilla notices the flow of people changing to accommodate for a standstill amongst the masses trying to be on their way. Then suddenly, it is as though the clouds have parted and the sun is shining and Carmilla can do nothing but look directly into the light because she’s right there. Laura is right there. In front of her. Looking exactly as she has in Carmilla’s dreams for the past 30 years. And Carmilla has never seen anything so beautiful.  
And then Laura is looking back at her, and Carmilla is doing her best to keep her eyes from watering up as a smile spreads across her lips at the sight of Laura, wide-eyed with her mouth open in complete disbelief. 

Carmilla speaks again, just wanting to know if this really is her standing before her. “Laura?”

It is only as Laura begins moving towards her that Carmilla realizes she is not alone. Her eyes shift as she sees another person moving with Laura up the steps and then all Carmilla can focus on for a moment is the way Laura’s fingers are intertwined with those of the woman beside her. 

Carmilla swallows hard, suddenly feeling embarrassed and out of place, but she rolls her shoulders back and does her best to mask it. Raising a questioning eyebrow, Carmilla returns her gaze to Laura. 

Opening her mouth and then closing it, Laura releases her hand from the woman’s. With a look from Laura to Carmilla, the woman asks Laura, “Do you know her?” It is only a whisper, but Carmilla hears it.

“I-” is all Laura manages to get out, her eyebrows furrowing as she looks Carmilla up and down. 

Immediately Carmilla jumps in, shifting her focus to the woman for a brief moment before pretending to be very interested in something off in the distance, beginning to sidestep the pair. “Sorry I must have mistaken you for someone el-“

Before she can get more than a step away, Laura has her hand around Carmilla’s wrist. “Is this really- are you really here right now?” Laura asks, barely above a whisper.

The smile returning to her face, Carmilla nods softly. “Hey cupcake.”

In less than a second, Laura has her arms wrapped around her, Carmilla having to take a step back to keep her balance from the force of the hug. With a soft chuckle, Carmilla lets herself relax, possibly for the first time in over thirty years, as she embraces Laura. She takes a deep breath in, her eyes closing as she holds the smaller woman against her. 

In typical Laura fashion though, the hug is over all too soon and then the words are coming out at a mile a minute. “I can’t believe it’s really you…I-I thought you were gone.” She shakes her head her brow crinkling as the words continue to come tumbling out. “I thought you had left, or that- that something had happened to you, and,” she takes a breath, “I never thought I’d get to-“ she doesn’t finish her thought though. 

Carmilla rubs small circles on Laura’s back with her thumb. “And I thought I saw you in the museum, but I’ve thought I’d seen you a bunch of other times and it’s never been you, so I just…But now you’re here and I’m rambling and you’re here.”

The whole time there is a huge smile stretching across Carmilla’s face. She lets the back of her hand run along Laura’s cheek, as though checking another time to make sure this is all real. And then she’s leaning in, her eyes breaking away from Laura’s only to take in the lips she has been able to only dream of for so long now. As she moves in closer, it is as though her thoughts are happening at the speed of light, a mixture of intense joy and intense fear that it will all disappear. Just before their lips meet, she’s broken out of her thoughts, and Laura pulls away.

“Um, Laura?”

It takes Carmilla a minute to realize that this unimportant series of words is in anyway related to herself and the girl in her arms.  
But then Laura’s hands drop to her sides and she blinks a few times, as though just waking up from a long nap. She turns to look at the girl who voiced the question, the same one who had been beside her earlier. 

“Oh, um, hey,” she begins, as though having momentarily forgotten who she was with, or where she was, and more than likely when she was. Carmilla could relate. “Sophie, uh, this is my, uh, this is Carmilla.” In typical Laura fashion, the sentence is embellished with lots of gesturing from one woman to the other. “We were-“

“Friends a while back,” Carmilla finishes for her, almost automatically. Hundreds of years of practice when it comes to this sort of thing will do that. 

Laura nods, and then the woman brings her arm to wrap around Laura’s waist. The action is not missed by Carmilla, though she pretends not to stare at this Sophie woman’s hand cupping Laura’s hip.

“Carm, this is Sophie.” It takes Sophie clearing her throat before Laura adds on. “My fiancée. 

Carmilla nods slowly, her features becoming like stone as her jaw clenches and it feels like every muscle is constricting, tightening to keep any little emotion from slipping out. “Oh, well congratulations. Sorry to have bothered you. It was nice running into you.” Her words seem to pick up speed with every syllable and Carmilla doesn’t even try to sound genuine or congratulatory or sorry or nice. 

With one last look at Laura, she quickly descends the remaining steps and walks as quickly as is acceptable for a human away from the girl she’d spent so long looking for. Maybe LaF had been right.


	2. Blood from a Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sometimes people downplay the parts of themselves they hate in the hopes that it will allow someone to love them."  
> Guilt-ridden Carmilla featuring flashback Laura who makes it pretty much impossible for Carmilla not to feel all the feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured we could use a smidge of Hollstein fluff before the fandom falls to pieces tonight...

Carmilla had lived a long time without Laura. For centuries she’d gotten by just fine. She’s survived all sorts of heart breaks- surely she can survive this. Now, sitting on the roof of her little piece of Paris, she takes turns kicking herself for a variety of things. 

She should have looked longer and harder for Laura. She should have looked in Slovakia and Hungary and Germany and France. She shouldn’t have given up so early and easily. She should have kept going.

She should have stayed and played nice with Laura and Sophie- although even saying the name in her head elicits a grimace. She should have taken what she could get- after all, she supposes being friends with Laura would be better than not having her at all. That being said, Carmilla’s always been an all or nothing kind of girl. Sharing’s never been her forte.

She should have been the person Laura wanted her to be all those years ago- kind and courageous and doing the right things for the right reasons. She shouldn’t have let her slip away from her for even a second. She should have told her she loved her sooner and she should have shown her in ways she would understand and she should have just been better because that’s what Laura always deserved. She wasted so much time. Even though Carmilla’s time may be unlimited, she should have thought more about the fact that their time together would not be.

She should have never even gotten involved with Laura in the first place. It wasn’t fair of Carmilla to introduce Laura to the many evils she knows. She should have sent her back to where she came from, as far from Silas as possible, the second things started. There were so many chances, and Carmilla should have taken one of them.

What occupies her mind most, though, is the fact that Carmilla had noticed how Laura had not changed in the many years they spent apart. She would not wish this frozen hell of immortality on even her worst of enemies. She doesn’t know how or why or by whom Laura was changed, but she can’t help but feel at least partially responsible. Sometimes people downplay the parts of themselves they hate in the hopes that it will allow someone to love them. Perhaps she had misled Laura in this way. Perhaps she had not been clear enough.

\----

“I think I’d like to stay just like this for the rest of our lives,” Laura had whispered against Carmilla’s jawbone, their legs intertwined as Laura traced Carmilla’s collarbone and Carmilla stroked Laura’s hair.

Carmilla smiled for a moment, knowing what Laura meant, but of course the cynic in her was unable to stay quiet. “The rest of your life and the rest of mine are two very different things, creampuff.”

“Right,” Laura replied almost inaudibly before letting a soft sigh warm Carmilla’s skin.

Everything was quiet for a while, and Carmilla would have thought Laura had fallen asleep if it weren’t for the soft brush of fingertips tracing patterns on her skin.  Eventually Laura spoke again, in a tone quite possibly even softer than the last. “Unless you were to change me.”

“Aren’t you the one who says a healthy relationship shouldn’t change a person?” Carmilla asked, opting for the teasing route rather than actually addressing what had just been said. Deflection had always been one of her strong suits- or weak points, depending on how you looked at it.

Laura huffed in a way that was so very _Laura_ and Carmilla could practically hear the eye roll that accompanied it. “I’m being serious, Carm.”

Carmilla scooted out from under Laura, resting the smaller girl gently beside her before rolling onto her side so she could really look at her. The hard exterior that was so often present in her expressions was gone. Carmilla brushed a stray hair behind Laura’s ear. “Trust me, Laura,” she began as their eyes met, “you don’t want this.”

Laura opened her mouth, more than likely to protest, but Carmilla picked back up before she was able. “You deserve so much more. You deserve the chance to really live your life.”

“And what if I feel most alive when I’m with you?” she countered without missing a beat, as though it were something she’d spent some time thinking about.

With a tilt of her head and raise of her eyebrow, Carmilla responded. “Well there’s nothing like hanging out with death to make you appreciate what you’ve got.”

And just like that, as though someone had flipped a switch, quiet, pensive, ready-for-sleep Laura was gone, and the persistent, straight-to-the-punch-line girl was suddenly before Carmilla. “Well if you’re so against the idea of me sticking it out with you, then what’s the point of any of this?”

Carmilla shrugged, trying to act as disaffected by Laura’s words as she could. “Just because I’m not alive in the way I once was doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy some happiness every once in a while.” She wished she had a better answer to give her. She wished she could just use the word love and get it out there and done with. But that would be selfish and counterproductive and the last thing Laura needed to add to her plate was the love of an ever-living monster.

“And having me by your side wouldn’t make you happy?” Laura asked, curiosity and uncertainty and all of those messy, messy feelings audible in the words that she spoke.

“I’m sure it would, cupcake, but practically that couldn’t last for as long as you’re thinking it might. And then you would hate me for trapping you, and I would hate myself for it too.” Carmilla traced her fingertips along the length of Laura’s arm. “No one can be happy forever, Laura.”

Laura caught Carmilla’s hand halfway down her forearm and held it in hers. Once Carmilla’s eyes had moved back up to meet hers, Laura spoke. “Well I used to think no one could live forever, but you proved me wrong with that. Maybe I could prove you wrong too.”

Carmilla squeezed Laura’s hand gently, her lips turning upward in the beginnings of a sad smile. “Or maybe you could grow old and happy and-“

“And where do you fit into that scenario exactly?” Laura asked before Carmilla could get another word out.

For a split second Carmilla swore she felt her heart flutter within her chest. As quickly as it had begun, though, it was over and Carmilla couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle at how irrational she was letting herself be. “Well I’m flattered that you’d want to include me, cutie, but-“

Laura cut her off before she could finish. “Answer the question, Carmilla. Let’s say that I grow old and happy and somehow manage to not get completely tired of you like you think I should. Then what?”

Carmilla was quiet for a long time after that. When she finally did answer, her voice had shifted back from defensive and calloused to something that might even be described as timid. “You ask that as though you expect me to know the answer- as though this is something I’ve encountered before.”

The softness had returned to Laura’s voice as well. “You haven’t?”

Laura shifted closer to Carmilla and moved to rest her head on her chest, one of her arms wrapping around Carmilla’s waist. Bringing her lips to the crown of Laura’s head, Carmilla placed a kiss before whispering, “I haven’t encountered anything like you before.”

\----

 “Why is it that I must always be so selfish? Carmilla asks aloud to the dim stars above her. “God, I’m such an idiot.”

She hears a rustling behind her, followed by a gentle thump. She’s up on her feet in a flash, poised to attack, or run, or go full-on cat, should it be necessary. She turns around just in time to hear, “Whoa there, lady killer. I come in peace.”

Seeing the girl before her, arms raised in mock surrender, putting the giant bunny featured on her sweater in full view. The corner of Carmilla’s lip pulls up into the smallest of smiles as she looks Laura over, and she rocks back on her heels, her arms crossing over her chest before speaking.  “Well if it isn’t little miss wedding cake herself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!!! Always love to hear what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading. I’d love to hear what you think!


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